Mainstreaming

The term mainstreaming describes the inclusion of students with disabilities in schools and classrooms with nondisabled students. Since the mid-1990s, educators have tended to abandon that term for another, namely, inclusive education. The rationale for the change was to emphasize the active role that schools can play to effectively include students with disabilities in the academic and social life of schooling. Inclusive education refers less to a specific set of practices or place for schooling than to an orientation (i.e., a way of thinking), to an outlook or stance that ...